The Price of Saudade
Lyrics
[Lyrics]
[Intro]
(Viola Caipira com ponteado firme e grave)
[Verse 1]
Em vinte e nove, a visita era curta e marcada
Sete e quinze eu chegava, pra cumprir a jornada
Mas em trinta e três, a chuva foi minha aliada
O temporal me prendeu, e a mesa foi arrumada
Em trinta e quatro, o alfajor foi a minha entrada
Fui ficando pro jantar... e a rotina foi cravada
[Chorus]
(Melancholic and longing)
Por que eu volto todo ano? O que me faz suportar?
São "aniversários melancólicos", pro meu peito acalmar
É um "erotismo inútil", que eu insisto em cultivar
Vendo as fotos da Beatriz, espalhadas no lugar
Eu suporto qualquer coisa... só pra ela eu relembrar
[Bridge]
(Tempo stays steady, tone becomes sharper/critical)
Mas o preço que eu pago é ouvir o primo falar...
[Verse 3]
(Voice conveys annoyance/disdain)
Carlos Argentino Daneri, com seu jeito de gesticular
Rosado, robusto e grisalho, com um "esse" a sibilar
Trabalha na biblioteca, mas não tem o que ensinar
É autoritário e inútil, gosta de se amostrar
Sua mente não para nunca... mas não sai do lugar!
[Verse 4]
(Emphasizing the insults)
Eu analiso esse homem, com frieza e atenção
A atividade mental dele é pura agitação
Apaixonada, versátil... mas sem direção!
É "completamente insignificante", é essa a conclusão
Ele faz analogias que não têm pé nem mão
E eu balanço a cabeça, escondendo a irritação
[Outro]
Levo conhaque e presente, engulo a indignação
O Carlos é o meu castigo...
E a Beatriz... a minha devoção.
(Fade out with a final strum)Composer Notes
Saudade is one of those Portuguese words that resists translation — not merely nostalgia, not exactly longing, but a deep ache for something absent that is beautiful in its very pain. The English “yearning” gets close and doesn’t arrive. In Borges’s story, the narrator frequents for years the house on Calle Garay where Beatriz Viterbo lived — and lived, and died. He goes every April 30th, her birthday, punctually at seven-fifteen in the evening, always with a gift. The ritual begins as tribute and becomes habit, then devotion, then a strange form of possession over what cannot be possessed. That progression interests me because it isn’t pathological in any clinical sense; it is completely rational given the premise — if you cannot let go, at least show up. The price the title names is listening to Carlos Argentino Daneri talk for hours in exchange for twenty minutes of looking at her photographs on the wall.
I chose the moda de viola with cururu because I wanted the rhythm of hard labor — something that sounds like an obligation fulfilled, a bill paid. The progression of dates in Verse 1 (twenty-nine, thirty-three, thirty-four) works as sentimental accounting: each year has its event, its justification, its alfajor from Santa Fe. Suno captured the melancholic weight I asked for; the viola caipira in drop-D creates a texture that sounds simultaneously firm and tired, which is exactly the narrator’s state.
The portrait of Carlos Argentino is the cruelest moment in the track — and in the entire series. Borges describes him as “pink, fat and gray-haired” with “a sibilated s,” working in a library in a minor position, producing poetry that goes nowhere with misdirected intellectual energy. The narrator observes this with clinical coldness: “continuous, passionate, versatile mental activity — with no consequence whatsoever.” It isn’t simple contempt — it’s the diagnosis of someone who recognizes in the other a kind of failure he fears in himself. The track doesn’t resolve that tension. It ends with “Carlos is my punishment, and Beatriz my devotion” — which is, I admit, a perfectly Borgesian conclusion: the absurd as a stable structure of life.